Two kinds of specially designed
shake flask was prepared, which can be used for monitoring some important parameters, shch as dissolved oxygen ( DO ), oxygen up take rate ( OUR ), carbon dioxide evolution rate ( CER ), respiration quotient ( RQ ) and volumetric oxygen coefficient ( K La) during the course of cell
cultivation or fermentation. So, the optimized results from these kinds of shake
flasks can be effectively used for translating the laboratorial data onto
fermentor or other kinds of
bioreactor. According to the data obtained from 4 cases (cultivation of brewing yeast, ATP production from AR by catalization of brewing yeast, cultivation of a recombinant E.coli to produce bFGF and Reduction of acetyl acetic ester to (S) 3 hydroxy acetoxy butanoic acid by a carbonyl reductase with in baker′s yeast) in specially designed flasks, we have successfully translated them to small scale fermentor or bioreactor with the same profile of key parameters as shake flasks and same yield have been obtained. It seems that the key parameter(s) for pure aerobic cultivation is OUR or DO ; for pure anaerobic cultivation or bioconversion CER ; for rather complicated bioprocesses, such as multi stage fermentations or bioconversion processes, even some recombinant microbial cultivations should be both OUR and CER or RQ . It seems also that the parameter K La is not so important for process translation, but an aerobic fermentor still needs to be equipped with enough capacity of oxygen supply to avoid oxygen depletion when the fermentation reaches the peak value of OUR . Generally, we believe that to maintain same profile of key physiological and biochemical parameters is very important for bioprocess translation, as well as for bioreactor scale up.